Dinosaurs to Dragons with Elizabeth Shreeve

Welcome and introductions

0:00When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Skims or Allbirds, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and great marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling, and for shoppers buying, simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. It's home of ShopPay, the number one checkout in the world. You can use it to boost conversion rates.

0:30Versions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going through to checkout. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash income, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash income to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash income.

1:00This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. But also just proof. I never really know where the show's going to end up, and sloths pooping themselves to death was not on the bingo card for tonight, but I appreciate it.

1:39Yeah, my editor said, yeah, Elizabeth, you do talk about poop a lot, don't you? I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky Science Systems. Hello, Megan here. Welcome to another Substitute Sister episode. I am joined today by author Elizabeth Shreve. And Elizabeth and I connected because of the Center for Skeptical Inquiries conference that I spoke at in June.

2:09And she is the author of many books, but most recently, Dinosaurs to Dragons, The Lore and Science of Mythical Creatures, which is a book for young readers all about the origins of and possible science behind various legendary and mythical monsters around the world. So, Elizabeth, want to say hi? Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's great to be here. Yeah. I'm super excited. I'm really excited that we connected. And I'm super excited about this book because this is absolutely the type of book that I would have just devoured as a kid and still would as an adult.

2:45I thought it was so well-written that it just appeals to all ages. And I also just think it totally captures the whole vibe and goal that we have at this podcast. And, you know, between this and making videos and everything, this whole idea of blending myth with science and that sometimes it was like an early attempt at explaining the natural world is just one of my favorite things. Me too. Me too. You wrote a whole book about it. Yeah. Yeah. So, today what you can expect is I've got some questions for Elizabeth.

3:18We're going to talk about the book a little bit more about her and how she got into all of this. But first, we have to do something spooky. And I will go first, if that is okay. Sure. Just to give you an idea of how it goes. Yeah. Spook away. Yeah. So, my something spooky is actually that almost two weeks ago, I went to the AirVenture Air Show, which takes place in Oshkosh, Wisconsin every year. It's this huge air show.

3:49It's attended by hundreds of thousands of people. And you'd think, oh, man, there's nothing spooky about that. But we got to see them do these demonstration flights with, I think, F-35s and F-22s. Like, very fancy, very expensive military planes that they launch off the runway right in front of you. And then you get to, like, see them do some tricks. And it is my something spooky because my brother-in-law, who's a big fan of planes,

4:20he said that he thinks that there are so many UFO sightings or people who think that they have seen alien ships. But what they are really seeing is just military planes because those planes, and I'm telling you from the demonstration, can do things that you just would not believe that a plane could do. Like, hover in midair and just, yeah, do these insane kind of like where they sort of stall themselves and float for a second and then do these crazy turns.

4:51And at the air show, they're not even showing their full capability because, you know, they sort of want to keep some of that under wraps. So I can only imagine. So anyway, I'm convinced more than ever that all the UFO sightings, a lot of them, are military planes where people just don't realize what they're capable of. Yeah. So that is my very skeptical something spooky. Elizabeth, has anything spooky happened to you recently?

Folksy superstitions and modern science

5:16I would say I thought of two things, Megan. Okay. I have one that's kind of folksy and one that's a little more serious. So you can decide what you consider to be part of your sort of spooky realm. Perfect. But the folksy one first is my mother was from Indiana, so she's a Hoosier. And there are certain kind of little superstitions that I grew up with and that are just kind of folksy stuff. Uh-huh.

5:46And one of them is that when you have extra salt in your hand, you have to throw it over your left shoulder. Ah, uh-huh. Have you ever heard that? Yep, I have. Yeah. So we were, a couple weekends ago, we were with our oldest son and he has two adorable little daughters. And he has a, his wife is from Mexico City. And so we were kind of goofing around in the kitchen and Sophie is our six-year-old granddaughter.

6:16And she had some salt. And I said, oh, Sophie, Sophie, stop. She was just going to like brush it into the sink. And I made her throw it over her left shoulder. And my daughter-in-law, who's from Mexico, I think she thought I was a little nutty. And then Sophie, of course, thought this was great because it meant that she got to throw salt all over the place. So the whole rest of the weekend, she was like tossing salt around the dining room and, you know, it was great. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure once she did it once.

6:47Yeah, I know it's ridiculous, but, you know, you will get my salt out of my cold, dead hand because I will always throw it over my left shoulder because you never know, you know, my hilt a little bit. Yeah. Right, exactly. Yeah. And then the other little bit of spookiness that I think is a little more serious right now is the disconnect that we have between science and politics is so nutty to me. Like watching RFK Jr. get interviewed and saying that the ICUs in New York City were mostly empty during the height of the pandemic when we know that they were overflowing and they were hospital ships in the harbor.

7:31You know, but people just kind of listen passively to that. I find that really haunting and spooky and bizarre. Totally. Well, yeah. Well, you've really captured the true range of this show. Which is sometimes laughing and, you know, cutesy little folk stuff all the way to, wow, sometimes the world is really a nightmare. Yeah. It's hard to understand.

8:01But yeah, and we will get into it a little bit later in the episode because I did want to ask you about an upcoming book. So not the one that you just had come out that you're doing on children's health. But we'll get back to that. But yeah, just so you know, I work in a public health lab. Ah, right. Everything going down right now is sort of very strange to watch from the inside where sort of life goes on in the lab. We keep analyzing samples. We're doing our best at the state level here.

8:33Right. Yeah. Yeah. But it's sort of a strange experience to watch it all go down. And then circling back to your throwing salts quote, Paige and I actually have matching tattoos with salt shakers on them because of the practical magic quote where she includes the always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. So yeah, those are good ones for this show.

Elizabeth Shreve and her background

8:58Well, now we can jump into the main event, which is talking about dinosaurs to dragons and talking a little bit about you. So first, can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background? I think from the little bit of research I did online, it said that you actually have a science background yourself. And then you sort of came into writing later. Yeah, I have a casual science background. I grew up in a very science oriented community.

9:28My dad was a medical research scientist at Brookhaven Lab on Long Island. And so our whole community was very oriented around science. And it was, you know, the post-war years, science was celebrated. Mm-hmm. And so I was one of the labbies. I was one of the kids whose dad was at the lab. Sometimes the labs. Usually the labs. Usually the dads. So I grew up in a community where to be smart meant you were good at science, kind of. Yeah. And my mother was originally, she was trained as a bacteriologist and she worked during the war.

10:03She worked in labs. But she was also a very artistic person and she kind of got more into art and she loved to read. And she loved mythology and she and I used to share a lot of myths and also poetry. So I think that was kind of the balance of, you know, those influences. And then when I went to college, I was very, very interested in natural history. And I had a high school teacher, biology teacher who took us birding. So I was really into nature.

10:33Yeah. Then I got to college and it was like the biology department was very dominated by pre-med students and that was a rude awakening. Sure. Chemistry was a rude awakening. So I majored in geology. Yeah. You know, which is fun, right? You go around and bang on rocks. Yeah, yeah. My PhD is in geology, so. I remember that. Yeah. Yep. It's so much fun. It's so much fun. And yet we had to go out to a field camp one summer.

11:04And so I went out to Colorado and banged on rocks in Colorado, which was really great. And by the way, my advisor in college was Stephen Jay Gould, the very famous evolutionary biologist. Yeah, that's awesome. I didn't realize he was famous, but I did house sit for him. Oh, there you go. Oh, there's my claim to fame is I house sat for Stephen Jay Gould and I took care of his cats and his very kind of messy house.

11:37And so it was not a very good housekeeper. Yeah. But he was great. And he was always telling me not to take too many science classes because I think maybe he kind of sensed that maybe I wasn't really a scientist. So I took a lot of art classes because I really love art. And then I ended up going to design school. I got a master's in landscape architecture after college. Gotcha. Yeah. Because I wanted to make things. I really like to make things. So I worked in that field for 35 years and it was great.

12:08I had a wonderful job and I was able to raise my kids working kind of part time, which was wonderful. But I always was writing and always, even when I was working at the job, I was kind of the writer. People come to me to write things. And then I started writing my first children's book when my kids were six and nine years old, my two younger sons. And that got picked up by Simon and Schuster as a four book series, which is crazy because that's a pretty lucky break.

12:38And then about seven or eight years ago, I guess, I just decided I was done with the job. The kids are through college and I just wanted to write. So I quit my job and I focused on nonfiction and science and nature, which is kind of like going full circle back to those early interests. Yeah, that's awesome. How many books do you have out at this point? It's either 10 or 11. I can't remember. And then I have four more that are under contract.

13:08Gotcha. It's been a good run. I know. Isn't it amazing? I can't believe it. I quit my job and I said, you know, I'm just so tired of this job. If I only get one more book published, that'll be okay. And now if I don't sell every manuscript that my agent circulates, I'm like, why didn't that sell? You know, it's gotten really spoiled. Yeah, you still end up getting sort of competitive with yourself about stuff despite not having the pressure of the job behind it.

13:38I totally understand that. Yeah. Yeah. So the place that, I guess, well, we sort of connected afterwards. I'm sad that I didn't actually get a chance to meet you in person at the conference. And then we ended up, I think I, I don't know, I must have seen your book pop up or I forget. We got connected maybe through Instagram or something after the fact. But, uh, so how did you end up at PsyCon and, you know, how did you sort of, uh, have you always been a skeptic about the supernatural or like what brought you to that space?

14:09Yeah. I was watching you from afar, Megan. So just so you know. I was being a fangirl. So, um, I think I'm a skeptic by nature because of all the science, you know? Yeah. I'm not a skeptic towards the imaginary, the imaginary. You know what I mean? Sure. Yeah. Like I, and I think that's part of the culture of, of PsyCon is let's enjoy the supernatural and let's enjoy the, the realm of the mysterious.

14:40Yeah. But also let's, you know, let's understand like, Hey, you know, there aren't really any monsters floating around, um, Loch Ness. Right. You know? So, um, I, I didn't really know about the skeptics community until I connected with. Bertha, with Bertha, with Bertha Vasquez, who is the education director for the Center for Inquiry. And I connected with her through TIES, through her program TIES, which is the Teacher Institute for Evolutionary Science.

15:11Yeah. Because several of my books have to do with, with evolution. I'm just fascinated with the, with evolution. I think it's the greatest story ever. Yeah. And what could be more exciting? I don't know. Like, it's just, it's so incredible that life started from these tiny little microbes and look where it got us with all these crazy, amazing creatures and plants and environments. It's like, wow, it makes my head explode. Yeah. It's one of those things where you think too hard about it and you just think, man, it's crazy that I even exist.

15:45It is. And that we got this far. Right. And how long it took. It's like, wow. Yeah. So I was fangirling her for a while. Like, we go to conferences, like, oh, National Science Teachers Association or, you know, and I was admiring her work from a distance. And then we had a friend in common because I was working with the, I have a book about sloths and armadillos. And I was working with his Xanarthrins.org. And our sloths and armadillos and anteaters are part of a group of animals called Xanarthrins that evolved in South America.

16:18And so their kind of social media person was the same guy that works with Bertha, Kenny Coogan. So we connected and we were on a webinar together. And then Bertha was coming out here for a conference for the California Association of Science Education. And I was speaking there also. And I invited her to stay at our house because she was going to talk to some atheists or something, you know, part of her job. Yeah. Which seemed really weird to me at the time, like, you're going to talk to atheists, really?

16:50Yeah. That seemed unusual, but now I understand it better. So she and a friend of hers came and stayed here and we just had a wonderful, wonderful time. And then we became friends. And when Dinosaurs to Dragons was coming out, I asked her if she would consider working with me on a teacher guide, which she did. And so she produced this amazing teacher guide. It's just incredible. I mean, she's like a force of nature. And she was going to the PsyCon in Buffalo.

17:23And I just had so much FOMO. And I mentioned that I would love to go. And she said, well, just go. Just go. So that's how I ended up there. Awesome. That's amazing. Yeah. And I just, yeah, hopefully we'll link to all of your social media stuff in the show notes so people can find you, you know, various places and on your website and all that. But you're so aspirational because I feel like I'm so terrible at marketing our book. And you just have such beautiful, like, graphics and all this stuff that you have up.

18:00And I was like, oh, I got to channel my inner Elizabeth and get back on this a little bit. Well, you know, the 35 years that I worked in a design office. Yeah. Helps. Kind of paid off. Like, I did a little bit of, you know, just like graphic design. I, you know. So I enjoy making art. I enjoy making graphics. So I set out a challenge with this particular book of doing posts that kind of celebrate weird things like Expand Your Horizons Day and World Snake Day and stuff like that.

18:32And I had to take a break this week because I got so tired of posting, posting, posting. But I think I'll be back at it next week. Yeah. I know. It's a lot those first couple weeks. So, yeah, again, I appreciate you taking the time to come talk to me for an evening.

Prehistoric sloths and giant ground sloths

18:50So I have to circle back, though. So you mentioned that you did the book on sloths. I assume you talked about giant sloths in there, right? Yes. Yes. Yes, right? Yeah. I just have to bring it up because I just, every time I hear about sloths and I just got to make sure that everybody recognizes that they were like weird. Everybody needs to know about giant ground sloths. Exactly. It's super important to me. All the megafauna, you know, that are out there or that have been out there in the past, I think I've talked about it on the podcast before.

19:26I've talked about it in videos. So I'm always, I always feel so jealous that our ancestors got to live alongside all these like weird animals. And then I think it didn't occur to me until I forget what it was. I saw someone else post something about the fact that like moose are like megafauna from the Pleistocene that still exist. And like, so are elephants. And like, technically, we are also megafauna because we get to be over a hundred pounds for most of us. And yeah, so I was like this, I had this revelation recently where I was like, oh, I've always been so jealous.

20:01They got to like see all these weirdos and there's all these sort of like, you know, indigenous myths and legends that are potentially based in these animals that they were observing. Like including ones that are about the sloths. And yeah, and then I was like, oh, well, I still get to live next to some of these guys who are around for that. So yeah, but ground sloths are super cool. And I'm always like sucked in anytime I see anything where you like people show photos of the tunnels that they dug and stuff. It's really awesome. It's nutty.

20:32It's totally nutty. So I got interested in that topic because I watched the PBS Eons. You know that series, PBS Eons? It's just the best. I love it so much. And those guys are great. Yeah. And one of them, now Gabe Santos, he's now one of their co-hosts. But before that, he became an advisor for Dinosaurs to Dragons. So now he's more famous. But anyway, so they did a couple of videos about giant ground sloths. Yeah. And one was like, did these sloths poop themselves to death?

21:06And yeah. The other one was something like, when sloths could swim or something like that. So I watched those two and I realized that I had not known about giant ground sloths growing up. And this was a terrible deprivation. And so I needed to write a book about it. So the book sort of contrasts modern tree sloths with giant ground sloths. Oh, amazing. So that's the structure of the book. Yeah. Yeah. And then armadillos.

21:37So it's called the Upside Down Book of Sloths. And then my editor said, how about armadillos? So I did one on armadillos. And armadillos were also gigantic or they're, you know, prehistoric cousins. It's glyptodons or whatever. Glyptodons. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so they were like, you know, some of them as big as little cars, which is wild. So that book came out and, um, I do love, I do love that book. And then actually there were these types of sloths that all died in like an old, uh, what

22:13looked like it had been a watering hole. Uh-huh. And there's a wonderful paleontologist at the La Brea Tar Pits, Emily Lindsay, I think her name is. Okay. And she was down there researching these sloths and somebody said, well, it's kind of reminds me of hippos. So hippos sometimes will be around a watering hole and it'll dry out. Uh-huh. And so they're pooping in the water.

22:46Uh-huh. And so the mud is like this poop sludge and it dries out and basically they die of disease because they're pooping themselves to death. Yeah. So hence the title, did these sloths poop themselves to death? And let me tell you, the fourth graders really love that. Yeah. They just, they get a really big kick out of that. I can always get their attention. Yeah. With, with that. Well, I mean, count, count me in with the fourth graders because I'm interested.

23:22But also just proof. I never really know where the show's going to end up and sloths pooping themselves to death was not, was not on the bingo card for tonight, but I appreciate it. Yeah, Elizabeth, you do talk about poop a lot, don't you? Like, hey man, you don't, you don't have a, you don't have an auditorium full of fourth graders in front of you. You try. Oh, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and anyone who says that like, it's not funny or entertaining is just lying. So. This is true. This is true.

23:57This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result, less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify.

24:27When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Amazing.

25:00Well, that's sloths and stuff before, and now I'm just sitting here thinking like, oh, I got a lot of things that I need to add to the book cart.

Writing Dinosaurs to Dragons

25:11But we can actually get to your new book, which is Dinosaurs to Dragons. And I feel like you kind of already answered this talking about your relationship with your mom, but I did want to ask sort of formally, what made you decide to do a book on mythical animals? Because it seems like some of your other books are a little bit more, I don't want to say like science heavy or like a little bit, well, they're just not, they're more about like biology heavy, I guess, or like more on the real life science versus like really leaning into the mythical aspect of it, at least based on the blurbs and the titles, but I could

25:45be wrong. Well, this is true. Dinosaurs to Dragons is the first book I've ever gotten into mythology. Yeah. That's for sure. Yeah. I did grow up reading a lot of mythology. I loved it. I love just kind of learning about a culture through their legends and how they're distinct and then also how kind of storytelling is so universal, you know, everybody's got their giant, everybody's got their... trickster, water, spirit, everybody's got their mermaid. So it's a wonderful unifying element of humankind, but at the same time, it's also

26:21wonderfully distinct and in different areas. So I do love that. Although I grew up mostly on classical mythology. Yeah. So the story began when I bought a used book from a library sale. I have it in my hand and it's called Mermaids and Mastodons. It's by Richard Carrington. It was published in 1957. And it really looks at the kind of, well, the first chapter is the natural history of

26:54mermaids. It looks at the inspirations for mythical creatures in the fossil record and the natural world. So I thought, I thought that sounded kind of cool. And I bought it for like a dollar and I stuck it on my bookshelf. And then a while later, I pulled it out and I just got this chill, you know, like, oh, wow. That would be such a cool book for kids. What an interesting idea that connects. Because my kids were really, also really into mythology, mythical creatures, dungeons and

27:28dragons, Pokemon, you know, they love, they love that stuff. They love that stuff. Yeah. And I always think we encourage them to love that. Even though we also encourage them to be educated about science. Yeah. So then I set out to write a picture book and I took it to a writing workshop. Oh boy. I think it was like 2018 maybe. And, you know, when you go to writing workshops, you sign up for critiques by editors. And I had this fancy editor from Simon & Schuster and she was sick.

27:58So I got her assistant, Julia McCarthy, who was not even an acquiring editor at that point. She was, I think she was pretty junior. And she said, I want to acquire this book. And that's like every writer's dream is to have an editor say that. And it never, ever happens. So she loved it, but it needed a lot of work. And then the pandemic happened and she, you know, we sort of all fell out of touch. And then finally she reappeared and said, is Elizabeth still interested? And of course I'm like, yes, please.

28:30So then I developed the book from a picture book into a middle grade book and, you know, dove really deep into the content. And Julie and I decided that we wanted to make it sort of global and not focus on a Eurocentric point of view. So I had a lot to learn about the world. Yeah, that's definitely been a learning experience doing this podcast and talking about a lot of things that, yeah, have a lot of really varied cultural roots and yeah, learning, you

29:02know, what people are comfortable with you talking about and how you should talk about things and yeah, all of that. So that's certainly challenging. But yeah, I've learned a lot getting the chance to dive into a lot of those things.

Selecting creatures for the book

29:15So great.

Selecting creatures for the book

29:16So there are 10 legendary animals included in the book. They include the griffin, the unicorn, the yeti, the bunyip, the mermaid, kraken, fairies, the phoenix, the quetzalcoatl, quetzalcoatl? Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl, yeah.

29:36And dragons. Yeah. So the namesake of the book. So yeah, how did you decide which creatures you were going to include in the book? That was a big challenge because I did dive pretty deep into the possibilities and I sent you over a little chart that I happened to find tucked away in a folder in the back corner. Yeah. And I decided sort of early on that I would organize it by land, water, and air.

30:08Uh-huh. And because then dragons are kind of all of that, right? Yeah. Dragons in their many forms, east, west, in between. So then on this chart, so imagine a chart where you have a little box that says land at the top, on the lower left it says water, on the lower right it says air. And then I was just reading, reading, reading about all these different animals, like creatures, including the one you did in an episode on the Mokole Mbembe? Is that how you say it? Oh, Mokole Mbembe, yeah.

30:39Yeah, yeah. I read about that one and many others. And so I put them sort of along the axes between land, water, and air. Yeah. What I wanted to do was find what seemed most universal and archetypal. Yeah. And I wanted to stick to cultural mythology and not get into cryptids. So that was kind of an important decision for me, because I feel like, for one thing, other people are writing wonderful books about cryptids.

31:12Sure. Like, you know, the Kelly Milner Halls and Laura Krantz, and there's that wonderful book Monstrous from Lerner Books, and then, of course, Ben Radford, and so many others. Yeah. So the psychology of cryptids is not as interesting to me as the deeper myths that come up from ancient times and sort of endure and take different forms and are traded between cultures, you know, along trade routes or whatever.

31:42So that was a big decision. So then I could put aside, like, you know, I didn't have to worry about Champ, you know, the cryptid from Mount Champlain. I don't have to worry about the Loch Ness Monster, and I didn't really have to worry about Bigfoot either, which is a whole other story. But, and then also I wanted to represent different areas, and so I was constantly kind of looking at the map, and I was finding that a lot of things came from Asia and the Near East, and

32:14I figured, well, that's all right. I'm just going to sort of go with that. So it was a balance of finding the creatures that interested me and seemed not too Eurocentric, seemed more universal, and were not cryptids, and were really, I don't know, kind of high profile creatures. Yeah. I don't know how else to say it. It's like they weren't obscure. They're not obscure. Although maybe the Bunyip is probably the least familiar to people. Yeah, totally.

32:45Yeah. But I was so excited to see the Bunyip show up and then see you talk about the Dreamtime stories for the Aboriginal people in Australia. Because, yeah, that's sort of been another thing that I feel like I learned about more recently, but just how they've been, like, recent evidence suggests that, yeah, they've been passing down these stories about these strange animals that live on the land, but also like the stories of how the various landscapes came to be for like thousands, if not like 50,000

33:19years is some of the oldest stories that come from there, which is pretty incredible. So, yeah.

The Bunyip and Australian lore

33:25So, even if it's not familiar, like, it's probably one of the oldest in the book, I would gather. It is one of the oldest, and that's another consideration because, you know, they're, like you said, they're cultures that really don't want you to tell their stories. Sure. And the Bunyip is not a Dreamtime story. It's more of a sort of anecdotal kind of family story. It's a cautionary tale. It's a water spirit that you tell your kids, don't get too close to the water, the Bunyip will get you. Right. It's like the kappa from Japan.

33:58But I still had a hard time kind of accessing the story. And one of my advisors, I have three wonderful advisors for the book. One is Gabe Santos. The other is Adrienne Mayer, who is a historian who's written quite a bit on this topic. And she's been really great. And then Professor Josh Miller, who's a sort of paleoecologist at University of Cincinnati. And he was like my serious science guy, like always like, nah, Elizabeth, you can't talk about evolution that way.

34:29Back in your lane. Yeah. But Adrienne said, don't try to, don't do the Bunyip. You know, it's going to be so hard to get access to information and graphics, but I really wanted to. So I got in touch with some anthropologists at museums, and one of them put me in touch with a tribal elder in South Australia, because the story kind of originates from along the Murray River in South Australia, near Adelaide.

35:00And over, this is over weeks and weeks, and, you know, email after email, and finally he emailed me back and he said, you know, this is a story that should be told, and you have my permission to use the story as long as you credit it properly. Sure. Each chapter opens with a little sort of let's imagine scene where a person is having an experience, they're finding a fossil, or they're seeing a glimpse of something, some mysterious animal through the fog or something like that.

35:31Right. So for the Bunyip chapter, I was able to adapt a traditional story from the Naringeri people and use that, which was very, very exciting to me. Yeah. I just was like, my head was exploding. Yeah. So that's how that came to be. Yeah, no, I think that's awesome that that got included, because, yeah, it's just, it's kind of amazing to have that mythology passed down for that long. And I think we have talked about before how they have linked back to megafauna.

36:04It's always megafauna for me recently. That there are certain myths or stories, like, about some sort of creature, like, stealing babies that they think maybe are linked to Diprotodon. So, which you might talk about. Yeah, there's a, I'm looking at it right now in the book, there's a skull of Diprotodon Optitum, that's a drawing from 1870.

36:35They were giant marsupials. Yeah. So they sort of look like, I don't know, big beavers or something. And they did overlap with the early indigenous people in Australia. Yeah. And they went extinct about 25,000 years ago. Mm-hmm. They were vegetarians. I don't think they were really sort of amphibious necessarily, but I imagine they probably were in the water sometimes. But if you, you know, if you were down at a water hole with one, I imagine it was pretty darn scary.

37:07Yeah. And if you found their fossils, be like, oh my gosh, what's that? Yeah. And then there's also, they had some very scary, very carnivorous megalizards as well. Yeah. The megalonia, which were like Komodo dragons, but bigger. Yeah. So that, that would be pretty scary too. So Australia is a scary place. Yeah. I'm looking at the picture in the book right now of the, yeah, the megalonia. But yeah, I mean, it's basically like a dinosaur.

37:37It looks pretty dinosaur-y. It does. Yeah. Except its legs are sprawled out to like a lizard. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's, it's more like a, not the dinosaur lizards, but the, the precursor lizards from, you know, the Triassic. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think they're probably, I wouldn't be surprised if they're related to Komodo dragons. Yeah. Right. Those are big, those are the biggest lizards we've got around. Totally. Yeah. Australia is just one of those places though. It's like, you just think, it's just, it's weird that like kangaroos exist.

38:09They're very bizarre animals. They are bizarre. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess, well, marsupials in general, because yeah, we talked about the diprotodon, which is the giant wombat. So, yeah, I don't know. They're kind of strange. Just one of those animals where you think like, yeah, okay, I get why you might tell some weird stories about some of these when you come across them. Right. Out in the wild.

The Yeti and mistranslations

38:31Okay. Yeah. So my next question is, we've talked about some of the stuff in the book. Do you have a favorite of the ones that you wrote about? Well, in some ways, the bunion might be my favorite because I learned the most. I went from zero to 60 in a couple of months. I do love that story. I don't know. It's like each one of these is like a little book. I love the Yeti. I really love the Yeti. I would really seriously love to meet a Yeti.

39:05Yeah. They don't seem dangerous. Do they seem dangerous? No. I don't know. Yeah. I don't think they seem dangerous. Yeah. They just seem like they're kind of big, maybe grumpy sort of guys around in the woods.

39:21Right. I love that you included, and I actually can't remember if it made it into our book or not, because I remember we had like a sidebar that I had written about the Yeti and how the name Abominable Snowman was like a misunderstanding for people, if you want to, I guess, refresh my memory about that, because I'm trying to find where you, I know you included it because I know I read it and I was like, oh, yes, that's like one of my favorite fun facts. You know, it became this kind of PR thing.

39:52Yeah. These Euro-American explorers were trying to raise money for their Himalayan mountain adventures. Right. And so they were really playing into the whole idea. So they would come to the Himalayas and they, you know, said that they saw this wild man covered with hair. And so there was a 1921 British expedition that reported seeing footprints.

40:22According, and their local guide said that the footprints belonged to a meto kongmi, I don't know how to say it, but a man bear snowman. And the journalist, whose name was Henry Newman, mistranslated that phrase as filthy snowman. But then he changed that to abominable snowman because that sounded a lot cooler. And so that began the kind of frenzy to find the Yeti.

40:55And the mountaineers were just like, let's play this for all it's worth so that we can raise funds for our adventures. And they got the Nepalese government kind of in the action by the Nepalese government was issuing Yeti hunting licenses. Oh my goodness. It was wild. So yeah, I get into that in that chapter. And that chapter was really informed by a fellow named Daniel Taylor, who grew up in the Himalayas and he made it kind of his, his parents were missionaries, I think.

41:30And he made it kind of a life mission of over three decades to figuring out the mystery of the Yeti and tracked it down. And I don't want to give away the surprise. So you can read about it in the book. But he did some really, really great reverse engineering sort of detective work. So here you have this mythical creature and he tracked it down and figured out how the evidence fit the natural real world animal.

42:02And it's a very, very interesting story of, of his kind of pursuit of that. And then he went on to do really fantastic conservation work in the Himalayas and was very instrumental in getting giant areas of the mountain region conserved as parkland. Yeah. So he's a pretty interesting guy. Yeah, that's awesome. I just think, I mean, well, I think until I did the little bit of research about Yetis for the Bigfoot chapter in the book, the Bigfoot section in our book, I was like, oh yeah,

42:35Yetis are white and hairy and it's like, nope, that's just because I called them the wrong name and they weren't actually like that in some of the other stories. The unicorn has a similar misnaming issue that got them to be kind of accepted as real animals. It was a translation of the Bible. Uh-huh. It's in here someplace. But let's see, Jewish scholars translating the Bible from Hebrew into Greek found references to a powerful animal called the Re'em, which the original Hebrew word means beast with a

43:11horn and probably referred to some kind of cattle or wild ox. But the scholars chose the Greek word monokeros, meaning one horn. And then when the Greek texts were translated into English, the word became unicorn. There you go. And then the unicorn made its way into the very popular King James Bible and became associated with Christ. And, you know, it became like institutionalized that way. Yeah. And so just like because of the mistranslation of a name.

43:45Yeah. Yeah. Which I'm sure there's like a whole other book to be written there about the power of language and the power of, yeah, playing telephone with translations of ancient texts and how many things do we believe or misunderstand because, yeah, because of a funny mistranslation that happened hundreds of years ago. So, yeah, I know. It's sort of like getting to play detective for all of that stuff, which is... And then you could say, well, why? Why do we believe them? Well, because we really want to. Yeah.

44:15Yeah, exactly. So I guess the one last thing before I ask you a couple of things about the upcoming book or the book that you're, I guess, currently writing. Yeah. So I love the way that you've structured each of the sections in this book, sort of like imagining this scenario with this strange finding or each of them is like a kid finding something or some story that has to do with that mythical creature and then jumping into like what are the legends and the lore and then sort of thinking about the scientific plausibility of

44:50these. Yeah. So I guess my last question that I want to ask specifically about Dinosaurs to Dragons is, so because each chapter sort of includes a section on how to be that creature, what or what would sort of be physically or biologically required, which creature would you say do you think is the most plausible to exist or most biologically likely to exist or have existed at some point?

The most plausible mythical creature

45:16Like, obviously they did not. But if you had to pick one that seemed, had the best chance. Yeah, that's actually, that's an easy one because I think the kraken is probably the one. Yeah. They recently even found a bigger octopus. It wasn't a squid. It was an octopus recently that was like a massive kraken-like prehistoric cephalopod. No way. Yeah. And it was like way bigger.

45:48Well, they only find the beaks of these things because cephalopods. You know, so they find the beaks, but this beak was one and a half times larger than the beak of a modern giant squid. Oh my gosh. And giant squid are already pretty big. So this creature called Nenomotuthis haigerti, named it after, haigerti. Yeah. It was just giant. So that just tells us like, these things get really big.

46:18Yeah. And really big, bigger than a sloth. And so I think probably the giant of the sea, the kraken, is the closest to what is actually true in the natural world. But those sections were interesting to write. And I went through a process, and Gabe Santos helped me so much with this. Yeah. You know, because I have this two parts of my brain. It's like, oh, miss, you're so wonderful. And let's get crazy. And then the other part is like this scrooge that's like, oh, you couldn't be a mermaid.

46:52It's ridiculous. Yeah, right. So it's kind of, it has early drafts, and I ran him past Gabe. And I remember we were sitting in the back in the collections in the museum where he works, and he said, ah, you know, you don't want to discourage kids with science. You don't want to use science to hit them over the head. You want to invite them to understand science. And so then I struggled to like, what am I even going to call the section, the subsection titles? Yeah.

47:23So I finally came up with to be a mermaid, for example. Yeah. Like, what would it take for your body to be a mermaid's body? Could it be real? And let's just explore that. Yeah. And think about what those adaptations would be like. So he helped me find a much lighter touch, and I felt much happier doing that. And I got to be more, you know, just kind of, I have fun with it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

47:54No, I was going to say I really enjoyed that it seems like throughout and especially in those sections, you did a good job of like making it feel inviting, like asking questions, asking, you know, the kids or people reading to sort of think about the possibilities of, you know, how this could work rather than just saying like, oh, you know, you can't do this. Yeah. Obviously this doesn't exist, but yeah, like you can't be a killjoy. You don't want to totally destroy their kids get off of my lawn.

48:27You know, I was like, you don't want to be a grump about it. And then I sat down with Josh Miller a couple of times and I said, okay, Josh, let's go through this. What's not feasible about the Phoenix, you know? And I have my notes from those discussions and, and he was like, well, Phoenix, like what about chemistry? You know, like you can't burn up and then recreate because what happens during combustion? Yeah. Right.

48:57So that's why there's like a little combustion formula, fuel, fuel plus oxygen, fuel being the Phoenix and then combustion being the burning. And then what do you get? You get water vapor and carbon dioxide, right? A few ashes, but you don't, you don't have the raw ingredients anymore for a new bird only in myths. So that helped me kind of bring in different principles of science through the side door.

49:29Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. And on that same page, you have the little sidebar about the, the immortal jellyfish, which is perfect. Like, hey, this weird animal that sort of regenerates forever does actually exist. Yeah. So, yeah. Awesome. Okay.

A new book on children's health

49:46So that is Dinosaurs to Dragons, but like you said, you have four other books that are upcoming or that you're working on. And I'd love to just hear a little bit more about the book you're working on, on children's health. So, A, what's, you'll have to refresh my memory on, on what's that going to be called, but also that's still going to be a book for children. Yeah. Or for young readers. Yeah. It's middle grade. It's for middle, middle grade ages, probably eight to 12.

50:19Yeah. And it's in collaboration. I'm writing it with, in collaboration with Bertha. That's a house. As part of her Science Saves initiative. Okay. So that was the other thing that got me to psych on because this, that book started out, she made a video for Science Saves and it's called Science Saves Lives. She came across a graph that showed how in 1800, about half of children survived past their fifth birthday in the United States.

50:52Imagine that, right? Yeah. And then the, you know, the survivability, I got the graph right here. So it sort of shows progress from 1800 to now and almost all children will survive past their fifth birthdays. So what were the milestone events along there? And she made this really charming video that you can access on their YouTube channel. It shows a little ghost going through the graveyard and gradually through time, the little, small gravestones get less frequent as more children survive.

51:23And she sent me a link and I said, this is great. I'll write you a quick little picture book and you could just have it. You know, I'll just do it for you because it's a really good, good cause. And then as I got into it, it grew and we talked more and I found out more information and I thought this is more than a picture book. You could do a picture book, but I was really interested in the topic. And so I framed it a little differently. I framed it as a series of birthday parties through time.

51:53And cause that just felt like a better structure to me. And then my agent took the proposal and found a wonderful publisher. Lerner Books is going to publish it. It's a book that I wrote very much with, um, in grief. My father died about the time I was writing the proposal. He lived to 103 and he was very much an inspiration to me and a very dedicated scientist who, you know, spent his career making healthy options for people.

52:27And then Trump was reelected. So I was in a, quite a lather. So there was a lot of passion that went into writing that proposal. And my husband said, you are never going to sell that proposal. Nobody wants this book, um, but you got to finish it because it's really important to you. And then this, um, publisher picked it up and I got to tell you that there are little scenes in the beginning of the chapter that show, that show what it was like to, you know,

52:58have, have, lose a friend, lose a friend to typhoid or have a birthday party. And your two favorite cousins don't show up because they died, you know, and they're heartbreaking. And I read them aloud to my husband when he comes home from work and we're both in tears. But the editor seems to think they're okay. So I don't know. Yeah. It'll be interesting. And then most of the chapter is about, you know, the public health advances and realizing,

53:31you know, germ theory and understanding that doctors have to wash their hands and then antibiotics and vaccines and the progress and the milestones in public health and medical science. But there are these, these tear jerker scenes. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think I could read that book myself, but I recognize that, uh, I think, I don't know, I've, I've gotten a little, um, especially when it comes to, to,

54:02to children and I have a daughter of my own, I've just gotten really sensitive to all that stuff. Like, I can't possibly, yeah, no way. Yeah. I used to, to be able to listen to sort of, uh, a lot more, um, like true crime stuff, podcasts. And that's sort of how I got into, to listening to podcasts was listening to the famous true crime ones and everything. And it's like, I can't even, I can't even do most of them now because so many of them are about kids going missing or, you know, things happening to them.

54:33And it's like, I just can't deal with it. Oh, forget it. If there's a kid that dies, I can't even touch it, but I wrote this book. I know. I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't know. I'd like my sister, like a system override to write this book. Yeah. You got to find a way to, to frame it that, that kids can relate to. But I imagine that it is challenging to write something like that for, I, and like, you know, talking about mortality to such a young audience. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I guess the good news is that kids sort of think they're a little more invincible.

55:11So they'll be able to brush it off a little bit. I guess so. Yeah. I guess so. I wanted to make it real. I wanted to really bring it home. Yeah. Because, you know, we've got to wake up. We've got to get kids vaccinated against measles. Yeah. Yeah. Measles is a very dangerous disease. Yeah. And polio, you know, and these diseases. Yeah. They're really serious. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I mean by I was like writing from a lather. Oh, totally. I'm still pretty lathered up about it. Yeah. So I, I wrote the scenes and they're brutal, but the editor seems to think they're okay.

55:46Yeah. And, um, we, we just been through revisions. We, I finished writing it. Bertha and I went through it. We sent it back to the editor. She's a fantastic editor and made a lot of really great changes. And then I worked through her comments and we just sent it back about a month ago. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, so it's, yeah, it's coming out in the, in about a year. Unfortunately, with the state of things right now, you know, I can't think of a better time

56:17for a book like that to come out to remind people of, and, you know, teach the next generation of just how important public health is and how important it has been in the past. And, you know, as someone who, who works in public health, it's very like, oh, but yeah, it's, it's that whole, that, that saying that goes around that, that public health is a victim of its own success is totally, totally correct right now because people just don't realize

56:47how good they have it in this day and age to have access to all of the amazing medical advances that we do and sanitation things that we have access to. And yeah, but even when I was a kid, like I say like, oh, this is sort of heavy for kids to be reading about. But then I remember like I read, you know, the stories about Balto and yeah, diphtheria and stuff and bringing all the medicine for, for kids for that. And yeah, so I, and I think it's going to be great. I just, and more power to you.

57:18But yeah, I think when I first saw the thing on your website about it, I was like, is this a book for kids still? So yeah, no, good to get the context for how it's laid out. Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you joining me this evening. This was so great. And I just think that Dinosaurs to Dragons is so great. And it honestly sounds like all of your other books are incredible as well.

Core takeaways from the book

57:44So I appreciate you taking the time or to circle back to Dinosaurs to Dragons one more time and just ask you for people who go and read this book, which I highly recommend that they get a copy and do so. What is the number one thing that you want readers and like, especially young readers, I guess, to take away from this book? I would like people to appreciate how storytelling connects us across cultures and how much we

58:15have in common with each other. Yeah. And also at the same time, how much we can appreciate each other's differences and learn from each other. And I think that that love and celebration of the natural world is really important to me that we have these wonders and we're always trying to make sense out of a phenomenon that we experience as residents of planet Earth.

58:48We're always trying to make sense out of it. Sometimes that results in a myth or a fantastic legend. And that's great. Yeah. There's different ways of making sense of the world. And one is through science and the other is through just, you know, loving it. Yeah. To me, you know, but it's kind of the same thing. It's like you can love the world through science. You can love the world through crazy animals that are, have, you know, single horns or swallow

59:19ships or whatever. Yeah. They're different, but to make kids curious about the world. Yeah.

Where to find Elizabeth Shreve

59:27Awesome.

Where to find Elizabeth Shreve

59:28Okay. So before we wrap up, can you just give people a quick little where they can find you? You know, what's your website, Instagram handle, stuff like that? Sure. Yeah. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook. My handle on Instagram is Shreve Books. And I am posting a lot right now because my dog, Hector, kind of got hooked on being on social media. So he wants me to make a lot of videos.

59:58Yeah.

1:00:00And then I'm on Facebook too. I'm on Blue Sky a little bit, a little bit on TikTok, also at Shreve Books and a little bit on Threads. And then I have a YouTube channel, Elizabeth Shreve Books. So I do put some of my videos up there. And then Dinosaurs to Dragons, you know, my website has all the links and all the information for school visits. I'd love to go do author visits at schools and libraries. So all that information is at ElizabethShreve.com.

1:00:32Yeah, that's a good point. I should make my daughter's cool. Have you come out? Yeah. I love it. That'd be fantastic. Awesome. Well, this was great. Thank you so much. I think you created something really special. And I just, I am so glad that we connected. Thank you so much. It's an honor to be your substitute spooky sister. Yep. Yeah. Good spookin'. Great. Have a good night. All right, that's all for now.

1:01:02If you liked this episode, hit subscribe and share with a friend. Check the show notes for links to all of our social media accounts, our Discord server, and Patreon. If you have any questions about previous topics or ideas for future episodes, email us at spookysciencesisters at gmail.com. As always, thank you for listening and stay spooky. Spooky Science Sisters is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network. For more information or to check out other shows, please visit evergreenpodcasts.com.

1:01:33NFL football season is here, which means when you switch to Verizon, it feels like because you get NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube on us when you buy an eligible 5G phone on select unlimited plans, which means you can watch every out-of-market game every Sunday afternoon. And it's all on us. Now that's the Verizon way to kick off the NFL football season, right? Switch and get NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube on us, only with Verizon.